Deep River Burning

by Donelle Dreese

  Denver went to the truck and started the engine. Helena followed carrying a shoulder bag and the two wineglasses. They drove around town singing to the radio. Helena finished the bottle of wine and then threw it out the window where it smashed into a telephone pole.

  “Oh my God, Helena, I can’t believe you just did that!” Denver exclaimed.

  “Yeah, I can’t really believe I did it either.” Helena looked out the back window of the truck toward the pole.

  They were consumed by different thoughts that evening. They drove slowly along a dark street on the east side of town where they parked in a small graveyard to visit the grave of Helena’s sister, who had drowned in the river when she was six years old. You would think Helena would have developed an aversion to the river after that, but she didn’t. She merely said, “It’s not the river’s fault we can’t breathe under water.”

  Helena went inside a small market and returned with another bottle of wine and two sandwiches wrapped in foil. They drove for a little while outside of town into the darkness of the countryside while eating their sandwiches and laughing. For a little while, they were both quiet riding down the road hearing the swoosh sound of the blowing trees they passed. Helena’s cigarette glowed as she held it by the cracked window so the smoke wouldn’t bother Denver. Then, out of nowhere, Denver began to laugh.

  “What are you laughing at?” Helena asked.

  “I told Randy the other day that I didn’t drink alcohol.”

  “You fool. Who taught you to lie like that?”

  “He was trying to get me to loosen up so I would open up.” Denver laughed.

  “Yeah, and we both know what he was trying to loosen and open!” Helena said putting out her cigarette.

  “Oh yeah! And I didn’t entirely lie. I only drink wine, on rare occasions. He had Michelob in his cab. Gross!” Denver said as the wind blew over her face from the open window.

  All of the sudden, Helena asked Denver to stop the truck and get out. “Get out of the truck. I want to drive,” said Helena. Denver got out of the driver’s side and Helena hopped in. “Got your seat belt on?” she asked Denver.

  With a wild look of sweet revenge in her eyes, Helena screamed, slammed her foot on the gas pedal, and roared the old truck into a tree that stood on the right side of the road a few feet ahead. She put the truck in reverse and slammed it into the tree trunk again all the while both of them were screaming and laughing until tears came from their eyes. Denver wasn’t so much laughing about having the truck destroyed but watching Helena’s enjoyment of the moment was something she knew she would never forget. Helena slammed the truck enough times into the tree trunk that it stalled out and would no longer run. They got out of the truck and watched the smashed engine smoke and hiss, half wrapped around the tree trunk. “Poor tree,” Helena said sincerely.

  “There are worse things that could happen to it,” Denver replied looking back toward town.

  Denver grabbed the wine bottle and keys. Helena claimed her bag and the wineglasses. Before she closed the door, she opened the glove compartment and took a stack of cash out of a leather wallet. Denver poured wine into both of the glasses as they turned back onto the road and walked slowly back toward town. The crickets and tree frogs sang in the heat, and the moon gradually peered over the trees in the west, lighting the road back to Adena.

  “Helena, I have something to tell you.”

  “What?”

  “This wine sucks!”

  “Shit.”

  It took a long time to get back to Helena’s house, not because it was that far but because they walked slowly. Sometimes they were quiet listening to the night sounds and their feet shuffling down the road, other times they reminisced about good times when they were younger. Up ahead a ground hog waddled arbitrarily across the road. They had already passed several piles of road kill and were hoping the ground hog was not next on the list.

  Out of the blue, Helena stated, “Josh was such a little dork when we were kids, but he’s grown up to be such a nice guy and good looking too.” Denver felt a pang of hurt move through her chest as her thoughts returned to Josh.

  When they finally reached Helena’s front door, Denver made sure Helena got into the house safely and locked the door before she started back down the street. Instead of going home, she decided to walk downtown. She felt like walking all night long. She walked back through Adena, taking the same streets they had driven earlier in the evening.

  Denver tried to remember where Helena broke the wine bottle on the utility pole. It was hard to see anything at 4:30 in the morning. She found the broken glass almost a block away from the twenty-four-hour Sheetz convenience store on Market Street. She picked up the large pieces of glass first, threw them in the trash, and then picked up the smaller pieces. Her hands smelled like alcohol. She heard the bell on the convenience store door ring as someone walked out of the store. About a minute later, she heard footsteps walking toward her. It was Officer Frick carrying a cup of coffee and an Italian sub.

  “Well look at what we have here,” Officer Frick said, feeling rather good about himself at that moment.

  “What do we have here?” Denver asked.

  “You smell like a cocktail party that went on too long.”

  “I’m cleaning up glass from a broken wine bottle.”

  “Why?” Frick asked. “What do you care?”

  Denver didn’t answer him.

  “I ought to take you down to the station right now,” he said taking a sip of his coffee.

  “For what?” Denver asked. “Disorderly street cleaning?”

  Officer Frick paused and took a sip of his coffee. “Why don’t you just head on home, Denver,” Frick said, softening his tone. “You got most of the glass. I’ll call someone to come out and clean up the fine pieces.”

  “All right,” she said. “Goodnight.”

  “I think you mean good morning,” Frick said as he walked back to his patrol car. As Denver walked away, she realized that Officer Frick would have to find a new job.

  When Denver got home, the sky was starting to lighten and several birds were singing, but the full blown chorus hadn’t started yet. She tried to open the door quietly in order to not wake up Aunt Rosemary but the creaks from the old hinges echoed through the house. Denver poured herself a glass of water and sat down at the kitchen table. She wasn’t particularly proud of her night of regression into adolescent delinquency, but she was more worried about Helena. She hadn’t known her to be so destructive. Denver got up from her chair and walked upstairs with her glass of water. As she walked down the hall, she was surprised to see Aunt Rosemary’s door open. She glanced into the room and saw a suitcase half full and Rosemary lying on the floor with her legs extended up the wall.

  “Oh hi, Denver. I thought I heard you come in,” she said.

  “What are you doing?” Denver asked a little perplexed.

  “Meditating with my legs up the wall.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it keeps me centered and gives me energy.”

  “Uh, okay. I’ll take your word for it,” Denver said.

  “Do you want to join me?” Rosemary asked.

  “Not really.”

  “Ok, but you look like you need it more than I do. Did you have a rough night last night?”

  “Probably. It could have been worse. I mostly just felt like walking all night. Do I want to know what time you get up in the morning?”

  “Before the birds,” Rosemary smiled.

  “Are you leaving?” Denver asked as she walked around the room.

  “Yes, I need to get back to Florida. Dan is starting to think that I’m never coming back.” Rosemary bent her knees and dropped her legs down to one side and slowly sat up.

  “Oh God.” Denver sat dow
n in the hallway in front of Rosemary’s room by sliding her back slowly down the wall. She put her face in her hands and said, “Everybody’s leaving.”

  “Well, I suppose you are right about that. If not now, then soon.” Rosemary looked at Denver for a little while. “Have you decided what you are going to do yet, Denver? You are welcome to come down to Florida. We would love to have you.”

  “I’m not sure. I need to think about it.”

  “You look a little like the world is going to end. You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m just tired.”

  “Letting go is hard. It sounds simple, but somehow it is often very difficult anyway. Letting go of people and places and thoughts and things along the way is all preparation for the big letting go. That doesn’t mean you forget, you just let go.” They were both silent for a few moments before Aunt Rosemary said, “Hey, I’m going downstairs to make some scrambled eggs. Would you like some? The eggs are fresh from Cumberland’s farm.”

  “Sure,” Denver said as they both stood up at the same time. As Denver walked back down the hallway, she noticed how some doors were open and some doors were closed. The sun that was beginning to rise was spreading light into the rooms and into the hallway through the open doorways. On some level, Denver knew that it was time to focus on the open doors. She touched the closed doors as if to bless them and say goodbye, and then followed Aunt Rosemary down to the kitchen.

  The following day, Denver woke up late to the sound of the phone ringing, although she was too tired to answer it. She went to Aunt Rosemary’s room and saw that all of her belongings were gone. She left the room exactly as she had found it. Denver went downstairs and saw on the kitchen table a bowl of black raspberries that Rosemary must have picked from the back yard and surrounding fields. Next to the bowl was a note that said: Don’t wait until tomorrow. Enjoy me now.

  A few days later, Denver received a postcard from Rosemary who was visiting some friends in North Carolina on her way back to Florida. The postcard featured a photo of a baby loggerhead turtle in the ocean surf, heading out to sea. The message on the back of the postcard read: It’s all good. Love, Aunt Rosemary.

  Chapter 14

  Revelations

  She remembered what Rosemary had told her.

  Anger has a bad reputation, but not always deservedly so. Anger can save you. It can help you refuse to tolerate the mud and poison in life. It can create electricity in your blood so you can tunnel your way out of a dark, inhospitable cave. It can build a steel rod up your spine so you cannot be knocked down again. It can show you that you can love yourself, even when others choose not to. It can help you remember things that you should never forget.

  In Adena, there were no answers, no perpetrators visible, only victims who had fought their way toward peace, resistance, or resolution. The feeling inside of her, that it was time to leave, was all she could think about. She had the money her parents had left her. At least she had that to give her a sense of security and freedom. Her world needed to take a hard turn to one side or the other in order to keep her from drowning in Adena’s deep river of dissolution.

  She searched her mind for all the possibilities and finally, one night, as the telephone and power lines were being severed to further motivate people to leave, she came across a book she had read from her father’s bookshelf. It was a large collection of short stories and there was one story she remembered above all the others. The story was about a woman who had sunk into the dark mires of depression and found her way out by traversing the cold northwest tundra with her two dogs in January during a snowstorm. It was a story that started off like a typical hibernal horror tale with all of the foreboding signs of a frozen corpse huddled in snow-covered dog carcass, but that wasn’t the way the story ended. In this story, the woman survived. She held on and prayed, and in the darkness of a thirty-below snowstorm, she thought of all the miracles that life had afforded her.

  While Denver had no interest in a life threatening experiences or winter camping, she remembered the hope that Josh gave her when they talked about traveling the country, and she remembered Aunt Rosemary whose lyrical voice and words of wisdom frequently floated across the surface of her mind like serene, white clouds, although not really sinking in. Like the woman in the story, Denver knew that she just needed to hang on, that the storm would pass, that there were things she could be grateful for. She also knew that it was time to act.

  She sold the house and much of its belongings to the state. What she couldn’t sell, she gave away. She donated items to Goodwill and to the Salvation Army and threw away boxes of clutter from the basement. She was surprised at how easy it was for her to toss away her old stuffed animals, games, and mementos from high school. Those things didn’t matter to her anymore, and it didn’t feel right staying in the house any longer. She never really felt that it belonged to her. It was her parents’ house and without them crossing the thresholds, roaming the hallways, and filling the rooms with their voices, it didn’t seem like home.

  She stuffed her tall pack with as much as she could carry, including a camera, a notebook, a few books, and a photograph of her parents sitting on the porch swing. Other than this photograph, she didn’t care all that much about anything else that was in the house.

  What she would miss the most were the paintings on the walls. Both her mother and her father had an exquisite admiration for beauty, and they surrounded themselves with paintings by artists who were extraordinarily talented but mostly unknown. There were paintings of birds, old barns, farm houses, rocky streams, sunsets, and one painting of a path that curves into the woods and then just disappears. The paintings were every bit as captivating as something you would find in an art gallery.

  She gave a few of the paintings to Helena who was unsure about what she was going to do and where she was going to go. When they said goodbye to each other, they pretended that they would see each other again soon to make it easier, although both of them knew that it might be a long, long time before they would cross paths again. Denver said that she would write or call as soon as she had an address, but Helena didn’t know where she would be by that time. They had to tell each other, and themselves, that it would be okay, that they would find each other again, that their roads would intersect someday when the coal storms turned into spring rains. Denver told Helena that one day she would come back to Adena, but she told herself that she would never come back.

  She felt drawn to the sea. She boarded a bus heading in the direction of the New Jersey coast. She wanted to see the ocean and its immensity, to feel the power of something much larger than Adena and her own life. She didn’t fully understand why she felt a pull toward the coast, a place that she had only visited on rare occasions for short periods of time, but the connection was real and at that time in her life, necessary.

  Departure was at 5:50 am. She sat in the Greyhound bus in a seat on the right-hand side. When the tires began to roll, there were very few other passengers to disturb her as she dreamed and directed her thoughts out the window. When the bus turned onto the highway, the tears also began to roll, unexpectedly and large. She was feeling fine. She was feeling good, but the tears came anyway. She didn’t want to cry. She could have slept, but the early morning peach glaze over the world was a rare sight, and she wanted to remember every moment of her journey. She had looked at the faces in the bus terminal before she boarded, and she looked at the faces of those sharing her ride. Where were they going? What were they seeking? Were they lost too? What did they think of the world when they looked out the window with their sleepy eyes and tired heads leaning on the window? She listened to the sound of the bus engine as it accelerated down the highway.

  The bus driver was a jovial, middle-aged man who didn’t pay attention to anything except for the road and the voices in his head. Sometimes his lips moved quietly forming incomprehensible words and sentences. At
times, it seemed as if he got so caught up in the conversation he was having with the people in his mind that his response would erupt loudly, startling those on the bus who were still awake. People in the front rows would look at each other as if to ask, “Who is he talking to?” He seemed oblivious to the passengers that sat behind him, cut off from their faces, their concerns. His job was to drive the bus and stop where it was scheduled to stop. No doubt he had already seen his share of lost souls trying to find their way to something or away from something. Perhaps the road would be easier if there weren’t so many choices, so many street signs with bold arrows and towns with appealing names.

  Denver felt like a vagabond, which wasn’t so bad. In fact, feeling like someone else for a while pleased her, and she had half the inclination to walk into a store along the bus route and buy a bandanna and big hoop earrings. The freedom felt good. To hop a Greyhound and just let it go wherever it took her. Only the driver and the other passengers cared where the bus was going.

  It was her immediate goal to resist the temptation to stay in bed for the rest of her life, and so she migrated toward things that excited her. She tried to think about what was in front of her rather than what she was leaving behind. She wanted to go to the ocean and live in some drowsy seaside town where she could see the ocean every day and the salt air would permeate everything she owned. She’d leave the windows open so the wind could blow the waving sheer curtains. In this sleepy seaside town, there would be a bright and roomy grocery store and a café with paintings of sailboats and ships on its walls. Life would be slow there. She’d eat things like conch chowder and seafood salad and watch the fishing boats come to port with the men looking tired and wind-blown. The sounds of seagulls would become so much a part of her life that she’d hear them in her sleep. She’d decorate her little cottage in the pale, salt-washed colors of peach, green, blue, and yellow.